An article about millennials settling in the suburbs of Colorado includes this summary of what millennials are looking for:

Essentially, millennials want the best of both worlds — the more affordable and spacious housing and better school districts found in the suburbs and the walkability and bustle of activity that older city neighborhoods offer.

The Urban Land Institute and accounting firm PwC, in their Emerging Trends in Real Estate report for 2020, have coined a term for the crossbreeding that is taking place — hipsturbia.

“Many of these ‘cool’ suburbs are associated with metro areas having vibrant downtowns, illustrating the falsity of a dichotomy that pits central cities against ring communities,” according to the report.

Sounds like the “surban” place described in the Chicago Tribune: single-family homes with more community amenities within walking distance. And you say the supposed battle between cities and suburbs is not necessary?

From the beginning in the United States, suburbs offered a middle ground between city and country. The early suburbs of the mid-1800s offered single-family homes surrounded by nature and some early suburbs were designed in ways to play up the connection to nature. Also from the beginning, some suburbs were closer to urban life than others and offered homes in denser settings. Some of these suburbs would later become known as inner-ring suburbs. More recently, pockets of suburbia have emphasized higher densities that might have grown around traditional downtowns or around new mixed-use developments. All that say, suburbs can be viewed as occupying a middle ground between different locations and hipsturbia continues that trend with offering features of both suburban and city life.

On a related note, it would be interesting to see if any suburbs come to have a mass of millennials. Just as urban neighborhoods can be ranked by the proportion of their millennial population, so might suburbs. If there is a critical mass, would this significantly change suburban social life?